Return of the Sketch

Since last week's post-Heroes Con report, several people have sent me photos or scans of the sketches I did for them, which was really nice. I'm going to run those this week. Nice easy post!


This one was hand-coloured at the show by Laura Martin. Lovely idea.


The Escapist, er, escaping.


The Good Doctor...


My favorite super-hero...


The Batusi as performed by Alfred.


Cheesy hero/villain trying to carry off the "gay porn star" look, Vartox, from 1970s Superman comics.


Tom Waits. It's bloody Tom Waits, all right?


Darn those Yancy Streeters!


And Sandman as a Muppet.

Will Sketch for Chips

Phew! What a weekend. Heroes Con has now come and gone, and I had a fantastic time. A quick thank-you to everybody who stopped by my table, to all the people I met who made it so much fun, and most of all to the organisers, those splendid chaps at Heroes Aren't Hard to Find, who made the show go smoothly. It's like watching a swan sail across the surface of a pond - it looks so easy and moves so gracefully, but you know it must be paddling like hell under the surface to do it.


Did lots of sketches! Oh yes! And by the end the requests for Doctor Who/Muppet mash-ups were coming thick and fast. Unlike many previous conventions, I didn't get to bring a slush-pile of unwanted sketches back with me, but I reconstructed this one from memory on the plane home.

A few highlights worth mentioning:

* Alec Longstreth insisting I experience a Dairy Queen to get "a taste of the real America". (Clockwise from top left: Me, Greg Means, Alec, and Mr Phil of Indie Spinner Rack)



* Spending time with super-nice, super-good cartoonist Chris Schweizer (left to right: Gentleman whose name escapes me, Chris, Kevin Burkhalter, Drew Weing, Joey Weiser, another gentleman whose name fell out of my brain sometime between hearing it and now - my apologies!)



* Getting to experience Muppet Madness close-up! Over in the land of not-allowed-to-import-it, I've been a bit sheltered from all of that up until now.



* The effervescent Dustin Harbin - the only photo I got of him this year was a piss-poor blurry shot from Saturday night's auction (red t-shirt). He's not usually that blurry.



* Talking with Ben Towle, Jim Ottaviani, Craig Fischer and friends after the auction and totally forgetting to take any pictures

* The after-show party at the Heroes store. A very civilised way to end the show. Here are some of the people I got to hang out with:

Ed Brubaker and Jason Lutes...



... Joey Weiser and Mike Maihack (that's me on the end looking vaguely camp)...



... Jason Horn, Rosemary Van Deuren, Guy Davis and Paul Maybury



I had a long flight home on Monday with a stewardess who talked to us all like schoolchildren and inserted announcements about "remembering our boys in the troops", which could have been funny if it wasn't so annoying. Then home to family, kids, cuddles and sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.

HEROES!!

Only a couple of days now until I get on the plane to go to Heroes Con, and very much looking forward to it. For those of you attending the show who might want to track me down, I'll have a table at the Indy Island section, and will also be doing a panel on Saturday at 12:30pm, Making Comics for All Ages, with Jeff Smith, David Petersen and Chris Schweizer ("and more", it says on the schedule - possibly Don Rosa, who will be attending the show? Fingers crossed!).


Now, who can spot the difference between the cover above and the published version? Any ideas? Check out the audience members four rows back, between Gonzo's arm and his head. Yup - Bert and Ernie. I'm not allowed to use Sesame Street characters on the Muppet Show comics, but at the time I drew this cover I wasn't aware of that, so I tried to sneak 'em in. But I got busted! Still, makes a nice little curiosity for the old blog.

On the subject of Muppets, there's a chat online with me at ToughPigs.com about the third issue you may like to check out. And I spoke to Comic Geek Speak on Sunday for their pre Heroes Con show, so I imagine that will be up before the weekend. Their focus was mostly on the Muppets, although they very sweetly took the trouble to mention Fred the Clown a few times and ignored my Marvel work entirely. Did I mention I'll have Fred the Clown for sale at Heroes Con? I'll have Fred the Clown for sale at Heroes Con.

One more thing about Heroes Con - I will be sketching! Yes, I will! I'm going to try an experiment this year and have a Tip Jar, the idea being that you pay me whatever you think your sketch is worth. So everybody can afford one - no excuses!

Middle-Class Twit

Thanks to the handful of people who've sent me a note saying they'd like to follow me on Twitter. I'm afraid I don't do Twitter. I can't see the point of getting up and running over to the computer every half-hour to tell the world I've scratched my arse. Because, frankly, that's what you'd get -- my life ain't that scintillating. And I can't see that I'd get anything out of it on my end except a colossal drain on my time. If anybody's got a persuasive argument in favour of the blasted thing I'll give it a hearing, but I've yet to hear one that doesn't sound like a justification for faffing about instead of working. And I'm perfectly capable of faffing about on my own. Sorry, folks, but there it is.


Here's my back cover to the new Indie Spinner Rack anthology, Awesome 2: Awesomer, which is out around now. It concludes a narrative begun on the front cover by Jeff Smith which continues throughout the issue. The line-up in this one looks absolutely stellar, and it's my first time being published by Top Shelf after dancing around one another for over a decade. Highly recommended.

Heroes Con is just ten days away. Cushlamochree! Last year I had a blast and I'm thrilled that I've been asked back. (Guess I can't have been as drunk as I thought I was.) I normally like to have something new to sell at a convention, but I've been so busy with Muppet stuff that I haven't had time to do any new mini-comics apart from those. What I will try to have that I didn't have last year, though, is a convention-only special sketchbook mini. I'm looking at a stack of sketches about a foot high and I'm sure I can cobble something together out of that before the show. So, yes, I will have something new. I'll also have copies of the Mugwhump the Great mini-comic which debuted earlier this year at the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing, collecting Chapter 1 of the online strip. So you've no excuse for not spending money.

The Lone Stranger

Further behind schedule than ever on the Muppets, but The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson #1 is only a couple more days away from completion now. I spoke yesterday to some cartoonist friends who, concerned for my health, kindly pointed out that nobody else writes, pencils and inks a monthly comic single-handedly. "Nobody else. Just you."


Now here's an illustration I did a while ago (judging by the art style). The name of the file is "Egghead and Zzapboy", but for the life of me I can't remember a single other thing about it. Who was it for? (affects Pee-Wee Herman voice) I Don't Know! Answers on a postcard please. Actually, writing these words, something comes back about the Egg - I originally drew him dour and professorial, but the client kept asking me to make it look more and more like "he was having a good time" until the final version looked completely unhinged. Who was that masked client? Shucks, Jimmy, I don't know.

Cracking Toast, Kermit!

I received some copies of Science Fiction Classics in the mail this week, which I take as a sign that it's now available. My contribution to the anthology is a Professor Challenger story called The Disintegration Machine (adapted by Rod Lott from the story by Arthur Conan Doyle). It's the first time they've attempted full colour, and right fancy it is too.

Here's a little curiosity from the vaults. Many moons ago I was asked to do a couple of sample pages for a Wallace and Gromit comic. The gig ended up going to another artist, but I was always quite pleased with the pages I came up with. So here they are. Mmm... bit of Wensleydale. Lovely.



Apart from that, my work life at the moment more or less revolves around the Muppet Show comics, which doesn't leave much room for other projects I can make exciting announcements about. I can recommend a few podcasts I listen to when I'm inking, when I need to feed some interesting content into my brain so I don't become a total vegetable: there's Art and Story, which is about the creative process as it specifically relates to comics; Big Illustration Party Time, which is more of the same but from an illustrator's point-of-view; Seqalab, the podcast of the Savannah College of Art and Design, always fun; Indie Spinner Rack, which probably needs no introduction; Webcomics Weekly, which hardly relates to what I do at all but which I find really entertaining; and a bunch of Radio 4 podcasts, including The News Quiz, Start the Week, A Point of View, The Today Programme and In Our Time. I've been meaning to plug those shows for a while now, so there we go.

Please Me, Tease Me

Running a bit behind this week, so this entry is a get-in, get-out-as-fast-as-I-can one. Here's a teaser image from an upcoming Mugwhump story for something called the Act-i-Vate Primer, which is pretty much what the title says it is - a print introduction to the work of various Act-i-Vate cartoonists. One for the Mugwhump fans who might be getting itchy during the hiatus. My story consists of six densely-packed (twelve-panel) pages showing events before the current strip began.

I got an e-mail this morning informing me that The Muppet Show Comic Book #1 is going for some larcenous price on Amazon right now. Please wait for the book collection, folks! The whole collectors' market is a cesspool of poisonous idiocy and I would encourage people not to spend stupid amounts of money on something you'll be able to pick up in book form in a couple of months. I don't draw these things to be put in bags and ignored. They're there to be read. Sorry to get all cross and irritable, but really.

Krazy, Daisy

The Small Press Expo is over and went very well, despite a few teething problems - my drawing workshop was cancelled at the last minute due to a room being double-booked - but it had a good vibe and sales were healthy. Looking forward to the next one, especially if it can be joined to the main Bristol show a bit more seamlessly. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, and thanks to Mal Smith and her colleagues for all their hard work.

There's a radio interview with me (which was conducted at the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing a month or so back) up online now, part of Resonance FM's "Strip" feature. You can listen to it here.

This week's picture is kind of a commission, although I was paid in books rather than cash - Ulrich Merkl is one of the editors of Sunday Press's frankly wonderful Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend collection, which he sent me a copy of in exchange for a Krazy Kat drawing. I finally forced myself to stop drawing pigs in wigs for five minutes and get the thing done, so here it is. The flow is a bit wonky between panels 4 and 5, alas - I couldn't make that work and still keep the design, so the design ended up winning.

A Hasty and Ill-Mannered Update

Couple of things I should mention that won't wait: The Fin Fang Four Returns, a collection of Fin Fang Four short stories which have previously appeared on Marvel Digital, hit the stores today. This has only just come to my attention. The nearest date I had until now was "sometime this year". So there's that.

The other thing is that it turns out I will have a table for the Saturday-only Small Press Expo (the indy show affiliated with this year's Bristol Comics Expo), which is good news, as I get to flog my wares and still wander around on Sunday in a happy fog looking for old issues of Kamandi. Best of both worlds! So look out for me at Table 3 at the Mercure Holland House, between Renegade Arts Entertainment and Al Davison.

(From the map I have here it looks like my table is in the Orchard Suite, whatever that is - it looks like you have to walk past the entrance to the Orchard Suite to get to the bar. Mmm... bar.)

Conventional

Conventions are upon us! This weekend I'll be a guest at the Bristol Comic Expo and its sister event, the Small Press Expo, at which I'll be doing a workshop for the under-12s (which I've yet to prepare -- eek!) and signing and sketching. This will be the first show I've been to for many a long year where I'm not an exhibitor, so I won't have a table for a change -- so check the schedule if you want to track me down (at this writing no official timetable is on the website, but there should be something at the actual event).

And, continuing our convention theme, this week's illustration is one I did for Heroes Con's convention booklet. The original art for this will be auctioned there to help defray the expense of hauling my arse out there in the first place.

Got a look this week at the beautiful artwork Jeff Parker is doing for my incredibly stupid Uncanny X-Men: First Class two-pager. It's the gorgeousest!

Last but not least, there's a short interview with me at ToughPigs.com on all things related to The Muppet Show Comic #2, which critics are already calling "not as good as #1".

Aaand... relax.

You may notice this week that Mugwhump the Great is taking a short break. I'm planning on not making it longer than a couple of months -- I value the strip highly as my only non-corporate outlet at the moment -- but a break was necessary before I completely burn out and forget what my kids look like. Once I've caught up with my Muppets schedule a bit, I'll be jumping right back in there with both boots. In the meantime I'll continue posting new content of some description here at the Hotel Fred, even if it's just a bunch of old sketches, and continue with the weekly blog posts. Got to keep you coming back, now, don't I?

Couple of bits of news, though: first, Slave Labor is going to be publishing the third Strange Eggs anthology at long last. Chris Reilly and I did a short story in there, the title of which I'm not going to reveal as it will spoil the whole thing, but it involves a character called Hal Monty, sleazy thespian and general slimeball, who was a hoot to work on. Also, there's a short interview with me at Wonderchroma on Muppet things. End of plugorama.

Back to Indie Island

This week, the delightful Dustin Harbin followed up last year's casual invitation to attend this year's Heroes Con in June with a rather more definite and heartfelt one, so after some quick investigation of air fares I've accepted, and will be attending with bells on. Boom! Studios, the publishers of my current work on the Muppet Show comic, will be there as well, so I daresay I'll be putting some faces to names at last. I went last year and had a great time, and I'm looking forward to this one immensely.


Here's an illo I did for Nemi Magazine in Norway - the text was about a missing Munch painting which was eventually discovered in the possession of a sleeping passenger on a train. I love drawing that creepy screaming bastard.

Scrape Those Barrels!

Weary after a long week, I'm at a loss for any new and exciting things to share, so I thought I'd dig up another oldie for you. This was done for the sheer joy of it, a few months after I'd seen Chris Ware's work for the first time (as if you couldn't tell). I thought maybe I'd found a way to meld my Python influences and my comics influences into some new third thing that was neither, but at the same time both at once. In hindsight it looks like what it is, a vaguely amusing page by someone who wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Still, I remain fond.


I'll be taking a short break from Mugwhump the Great in a couple of weeks - mainly because I'm burned out from overwork and I need to get things sorted out before I jump back into it. Chapter Two will conclude soon, so that will be a good place to stop for a month or two. I'm not sure what, if anything, will appear here in its place - I'd like to do something, as long as it's really easy or already lying around. I'll put me thinkin' head on.

Cow Secrets

This past week has seen me in my bed, sweating, shivering and farting, as my body finally gives up after several months of overwork. So my schedule is one hell of a mess and I'm scrambling to catch up a little right now. Quickly, then: there's a mini-interview with me at ToughPigs.com about Muppet Show related stuff...


I can't remember what the above page was done for now - although I do have a vague memory of the title being inspired by the old "Herd of Cows" crosstalk act (you know: "Herd of cows?" "Of course I've heard of cows." "No, no, a cow herd." "What did it hear?" etc. ) This was when I was still in my "let's make up a lot of disjointed panels and hope they hang together as a story" mode as a writer, which some might argue I still am. Personally, I think I've progressed to disjointed pages now.

Sorry if your Muppet Show #1 review isn't in the sidebar of the hotelfred.com front page - I was going to link to them all, but the sheer volume of the damn things got a bit out of hand. I'll probably try to work up a review links page soon, with one elegant link in the sidebar there to keep it tidy. Or I might just leave things the way they are and go back to bed, sweating, shivering and farting my way to a better tomorrow.

What just happened?

What a strange, strange week it's been. First thing to say is thank you -- thank you to everybody who said kind things about Muppet Show #1 online or in person, thank you to everyone who bought it or read it or just gave it a chance. (I'm especially gratified by the thumbs-up from ToughPigs.com who, as the name implies, I was expecting to be a tough crowd.) And thank you to Mark Waid for getting to the heart of the matter in his inimitable style.


The page above is one of the ones I did for the late, lamented Disney Adventures magazine, which was never published. It seems to me I ought either to have some Muppet content on my website or a link to a place where you can find some, so this will have to do for now until I figure out what I'm doing.

I had the privilege of recording an interview for the wonderful podcast for freelance illustrators and cartoonists, Big Illustration Party Time, on Sunday night. It's a great show for those in the ink-wrangling field, and very entertaining for those who aren't -- highly recommended. (And check out the work of hosts Kevin Cross and Joshua Kemble while you're there!)

But the highlight of my week was the great UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing, my favourite UK show by some distance. No dealers, no costumes, just cartoonists promoting their own comics, like it should be. Mmm... comics. Smoke one today.

Gimme an "M"!

The first issue of The Muppet Show should be out on Wednesday - there's a preview at Comic Book Resources for those who can't wait. I saw a PDF version of the finished book last week and I'm very happy with how it's come out -- let's see if anyone else agrees... Below is a frame from the pencils to issue #3, the Gonzo issue. (Just to give you something to look forward to -- or to avoid, according to personal preference.)


If all goes smoothly, I should have a minicomic version of the first chapter of Mugwhump the Great available at The UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing this weekend. (I still need to do a bit of work on it, but it's getting there.) If you're in London (or willing to make the journey), please stop by and say hello -- I'll be there all day sketching, selling comics and artwork and generally making an appalling nuisance of myself as usual.

Brown Thing

Been a while since I've posted any Horrible Histories illustrations, so here's one from the vaults which I don't actually remember drawing. I rather like the penwork on this one, although in hindsight I don't think I quite captured the Martin Brown look as much as I probably thought I had at the time.


Counting down the days now until the Web and Mini-Comix Thing. And indeed until Muppet Show #1, which will be within a couple of days of one another. Currently drawing issue #3, writing issue #5 and wondering what the world outside looks like...

A Box of Frogs

I love the expression "mad as a box of frogs". No idea where I first heard it, but whoever came up with it - well done.


Here's the cover to Zoot #6 from years gone by, photoshopped to remove the text, for reasons which escape me now - I think I just wanted to see if I could do it. On reflection I thought it might make a good cover to the hypothetical Zoot collection I floated last week (thanks to both of you who thought that was a good idea, by the way). Especially since I don't have a spare day to do a new one. Not saying it's going to happen tomorrow or anything, but it's another piece of the jigsaw falling into place.

Oh, Yoko!

Turned in the script for my X-Men story this week. Well, I say X-Men story -- what it is is, for all intents and purposes, a roll call for the never-quite-actually-formed Legion of Substitute Mutants. All good clean fun, which is why I'm going to have to think of another character to replace Holland's mutant hero, Dykefinger.


Here's a strip written by my brother Andrew for our long-forgotten comic, Zoot!, based on a never-used idea for a film conceived by Yoko Ono, in which every character experiences time at a different speed simultaneously. This was in my "I Don't Know What I'm Doing" phase of painted colour, where I'd basically fix everything with coloured pencils after I'd botched them in watercolour. Circa 1992 I think.

I've been thinking lately that I should sort out some kind of Best of the Rest Zoot! collection, a companion volume to Zoot Suite (Zoot Brut? Zoot Cheroot?), maybe on a print-on-demand basis -- I can't see any real publisher taking a gamble on something so relentlessly anti-commercial in these troubled times. Tell you what, I'll keep you posted. Might be one for the Bristol show in May, if I can get my junk together.

When Worlds Collide

It's been a while since I posted one of my illustrations for Inside Soap magazine, so here's one I did this week with a vague connection to my current comics work. The scenario was suggested by the editor and I'm pretty sure he's not aware that I'm doing Muppets and vaudeville puppetry elsewhere, so this is a complete coincidence. But it felt nice to think that all my work had a kind of thematic coherence for a brief moment.


Always with the puppets, Langridge. You want to get out more.

Oh, yes - while I think of it, it looks like the first of my Captain America short stories is out now, in Marvel Adventures: Super-Heroes #8. Lead story scripted by Scott Gray, backup scripted by me, all beautifully drawn by Craig Rousseau. Further installments to appear at three-month intervals, so I think that makes the next one issue #11. Anyway, cover reproduced below for your convenience.


Coming up in the next installment: PRODOK! How's that for a teaser?

Rehearsal Time is Over!

As I write this, the first issue of the Muppet Show comic is getting ready to go to the printers. This week I've been doing a few last-minute art fixes after Disney finally got back with comments - nothing too drastic, they seem pretty happy for the most part. They wanted Animal's hair a bit shaggier, that's about it. So shaggier it shall be.


Nick Mag's Nickelodeon Comic #33 (February 2009 issue) arrived in the post this week with a "Back to the Barnyard" story I drew, so I guess that's out around now. Oh, and Cthulhu Tales #11 as well. I have very mixed feelings about how I can work for months with nothing coming out, then everything hits the stands in a three-week period... it makes me look like a very lazy man with an occasional amphetamine habit.

The Ultimate Answer

This week I turn 42. When I was 22, my then-flatmate was turning 20 at around the same time, so we threw a 42nd birthday party. (So I've done this before, you see.) Anyway, one of the presents I received that year was this strip by Dylan Horrocks. I guess this is my last good reason to share it, so here it is.


I've been asked to write two pages for an X-Men title. I know next to nothing about the X-Men -- haven't even seen the movies. Ha ha! So of course I said yes immediately. But probably the highlight of my comics week was being befriended on Friendface by Fred Hembeck. When I was ten I wanted to be Fred Hembeck. And now he's my Friendface friend. I've arrived!

Mangled Manga

Not quite a week old: there's yet another Newsarama interview, this one focussing on the Muppet Show comic, over here.


Almost finished with these old Disney mastheads now; just a couple more left. I was asked to do this one in a Manga style, except I can't do a Manga style to save my life -- so what you get is more or less 100% Langridge with a few big eyes grafted on top of it. Sorry, Manga fans.

Bristol and Death

Here's an illustration I did recently for a book called Machine of Death, co-edited by David Malki! (who does the very funny strip Wondermark). The piece it's illustrating is called "Prison Knife Fight", written by the brilliant Shaenon K. Garrity.


Newsy news: it looks like I'm going to be a guest at the upcoming Bristol Comics Expo on May 9th and 10th. Normally I go the whole hog and exhibit as a small press publisher, but this year it looks like I missed the booking window, so I thought, why not see if I can blag my way in as a guest for once? And, in an interesting development, there's something called the Small Press Expo (not to be confused with the identically-named American show in Bethesda, MD) happening in connection with it this year, so I'll be involved with that as well, doing children's workshops and a bit of sketching and what-have-you. So that's all worked out rather nicely.

Here be Beasts!

The magnificent new BEASTS! book, BEASTS! II, arrived in the mail this week. It's absolutely beautiful - a beautiful object containing beautiful things. I did Spring-Heeled Jack for the book, as seen here:


The original artwork for this piece, as well as many, many more by the other contributors, is on display at Giant Robot in San Francisco right now - well worth checking out if you're in the area.

Finished inking Muppet Show #1 last night, just in the nick of time. Now I've got to start #2. How dare they put these things out once a month!

Tough Pigs

One for the Muppet watchers among you: there's a brief Muppet-themed interview with me over at ToughPigs.com this week. Thanks to Joe Hennes for conducting it.

Meanwhile, back here at the Hotel Fred, I thought we deserved a splash of colour for a change, so here's another one of those Disney Adventures credit-box masthead illustrations I did a couple of years back.


It's only just occurred to me that the Hotel Fred website is probably overdue for a redesign - the black-and-white theme was concocted when I was doing a weekly colour Fred the Clown cartoon, and since switching to black and white for Mugwhump it's been looking a tad drab. Might have to give this some thought over the next little while. Watch this space! But, er, don't forget to go away and have a cup of tea and a biscuit every once in a while. Otherwise you'll just starve.

End of Chapter One!

Mugwhump Chapter One concludes this week over at Act-i-Vate (and at the Hotel Fred next week). Time to panic as I try to figure out Chapter Two. I've got a plot written down but not a single word of dialogue. Watch this space as I fly by the seat of my pants, very probably into a cliff.


Here's another Kirby-themed convention booklet page, by popular demand (if two people counts as popular - as a proportion of my readership, that's probably about right, actually). I suppose it's a sequel of sorts to Kirby Planet a couple of weeks ago. These things were always auctioned for charity, so I tried to get some Marvel and DC characters in there each time to bump the bids up a bit, while still doing something identifiably Langridge. You have to pay a fee to be in the convention books these days, and the artwork doesn't go to a good cause any longer, so I've kind of stopped caring. I'll shut up now before my true age of 112 becomes even more obvious.

Have a Happy Nude Ear

Nothing special happened this week except I took two days off and promptly caught the biggest cold I've had in a while. It's something my body seems to do whenever I take off more than a single afternoon - it treats my inactivity as an excuse to stop fighting whatever viruses have been hovering around me and get really, really sick. So, atchoo. There's something to be said for working through Christmas...

Here's another of those Disney Adventures credit boxes, vaguely topical if you're watching a lot of telly over the hols. Happy New Year!

The Christmas Clown

Here's that Fred the Clown Futurama cameo mentioned last week, which Chris Reilly was kind enough to send me. What an odd feeling... in a nice way.


Nate Cosby at Marvel has suggested the extremely talented and wonderful Sonny Liew as an artist for my Spider-Man story, which is so great I could sceam. He's a fabulous artist, and I really hope he says yes, particularly as my entire story pitch is now based around the idea that he'll be drawing it.

And since this will be the last update before Christmas, let me just wish everyone a very merry one.

We all live in the future now

Weirdness Department: I was informed yesterday by Chris Reilly that Fred the Clown makes a cameo appearance in Futurama Issue #39. I haven't seen it myself, but I'm dying to.

Working on writing the third issue of the Muppet comic and pencilling the first issue and, er, that's about it. Nate Cosby at Marvel asked me to write eight pages for an upcoming Spider-Man comic, which I can just about work into my hour-and-a-half per day writing schedule if I move some stuff around. Now all I need is an idea. Eek.


For no reason at all, except for a glancing Marvel Comics connection, here's a strip I did for a convention booklet many moons ago. It's scanned from the printed page and doesn't look too pretty as a result, but I think the gags sort of stand up nonetheless. It's a page I should probably redraw one day.

Squarwick

My colleague, friend and fellow Kiwi expatriate Scott Gray was involved in a car accident yesterday and was quite badly hurt, so I'm not feeling too clever this morning. I believe he's going home today after a night in hospital, with some broken bones and "a black eye the size of a rugby ball". I'm relieved it wasn't worse -- as, I'm sure, is he. Merry Christmas, eh? Anyway, this one's for him.

The Sincerest Form

This week I've been doing a two-pager for Boom Studios' Cthulhu Tales anthology (#11, if you're curious). So tempting to post it here, but I should probably wait until it's been out a while. So instead here's another of those Disney Adventures credit mastheads I did last year.


Observant readers will notice that I completely stole my own idea from the back cover of Fred the Clown #1. Which in turn was stolen from the radio panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

As to where they stole it from, I'm afraid you're on your own there.

The Three-Headed Rat of Doom

First things first - I believe the new Fin Fang Four stories begin their online serialisation on Marvel Digital tomorrow (I'll update that link when I have an actual page to direct you towards). Last I heard, they were going to kick off with the Fin Fang Foom solo story, The Bald Truth, which is one of Scott Gray's finest and funniest.

Monday was a deadline cluster - a triple whammy of Nick Mag, Muppets and Inside Soap spot illustration. Like three rats with their tails tied together (I'm just tired enough for that metaphor to make perfect sense - it'll probably be a complete mystery to me tomorrow). Finished the second variant cover for Muppet Show #1, just squeaking in on the deadline - there may be tweaks before publication, but this is what'll go in the Previews catalogue for now.


And I should clear something up: there's an online press release which seems to suggest that I'm some sort of "supervisor" on the Muppets comics, which is not the case, I'm afraid. I'm just a schlepper with a pencil, and that's kind of the way I like it. Any and all supervision is coming from Boom Studios, Disney and the lovely Jim Lewis at the Henson company, while I sit in an attic all day, scratching away. (I blame this new laundry powder.) So if there are Muppet fans who are worried about what I might do to the characters we all know and love, please rest assured that I don't have anything like the kind of power that could do any serious damage. Frankly, I'm lucky to be allowed to cross the road by myself.

Disney Dribblings

It's my daughter's sixth birthday today. Blimey. Where did that go.

Just about finished the second of the short Captain America stories I'm writing for Marvel Adventures. This officially puts me ahead of schedule. Yay! It looks like Scott Gray will be writing the first 16 pages of each book now, which makes me very happy indeed. (He'll be doing the 21st Century Cap, I'm doing the World War Two stuff.) Scott's plot outlines look fantastic. I'll have to actually work at this.

For no reason at all, except that the magazine's been gone for long enough now that I don't think posting the illustrations here will make any waves, here's a piece I did for the defunct Disney Adventures. For a few months there I was their official credit masthead illustrator... fun job while it lasted. I've got a few more of these I'll post over the next little while.


Currently working on: Muppets, Nick Mag, Captain America, more or less in rotation. Plus I'm illustrating a two-page strip for Cthulhu Tales (did I spell that right?) which imagines H. P. Lovecraft's early, failed career as a writer of descriptive paragraphs for chocolate boxes, which is such a lovely idea I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Hands Up

Disney's crack team of thumb-twiddlers have finally given my first Muppet script the go-ahead, so things are finally moving. Moving at a slightly faster speed than I was prepared for, in fact. Boom Studios have decided to go with variant covers on the first issue, they want them both drawn by me, and they want them yesterday. Eek! Here's the first one in pencil form...


Boom, like Disney Adventures before them, have asked me to do the characters in my own style, but even so, there are some that simply don't work unless you get them just so (Miss Piggy being the most glaring example). I've tried my best to do them justice. But my god, I hope it gets easier. The last thing I want is a crowd of glove puppets outside my window carrying burning torches, the smell of hot foam rubber and felt scorching the night air.

Young Boris!

As promised, here's my "Young Boris" strip wot I did for Time Out. For non-UK readers, I think all you need to know to get up to speed is that Boris Johnson is the mayor of London, famous for howlingly politically-incorrect clunkers and coming across like a public school buffoon (the British call private schools "public schools" for some obscure reason I've forgotten). "The evil Doctor Livingstone" is the previous mayor, and was Boris' opponent in the mayoral elections. Ta-dah.

Vigil of the Mad and other stories

I should like to draw your attention to the recently-released Giant-Sized X-Men: First Class #1, which features two pages written and drawn by me. The brief was to do something involving Charles Xavier as a kid in a Village of the Damned/Midwich Cuckoos type scenario, which I ended up doing in the style of Edward Gorey. Why? I don't know.

Something I keep forgetting to mention: I've got a piece in the upcoming Fantagraphics book, Beasts! Book 2. I draw Spring-Heeled Jack. The book promises to be a thing of beauty by all accounts, featuring a veritable Who's Who (or in my case Who's That) of alt-comix talent.

Last but not least, I've been working on the cover to next year's Fin Fang Four special this week. Continuing with the Silver Age theme established on the first one-shot, here's where it's at right now...


This one makes me stupidly happy for some reason.